Clean Slate
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1609: Now that they've been helping the 'newbies,' Rachel and Santana find they're doing much better in Glee Club, and the newbies do, too. - Berry-St series


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 76th cycle. Now cycle 77!_

_A/N: Holy lateness Batman! *shakes fist at sky* Technology!_

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**"Clean Slate"  
In Gen1!world: G1!Rachel/Santana, G2!Quinn, Mike, Kurt, Jesse  
Berry-St series  
_(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)_  
**

To see them all now, you might not have known how disjointed they had been as a group the week before. Schuester, who had barely begun to wonder if morale was down, now saw that his Glee Club was back on track, and he smiled and put everything else to rest. He couldn't see how Rachel, and Santana, and some of the others, looked rather pleased with themselves.

They'd all been working together, them and this new Jesse, to ready the others, so they wouldn't struggle so much, and in doing that, they had as good as cemented their bond. The nearer they got, the easier it seemed to be for their 'newbies' to grow at ease during Glee rehearsals.

"Now I don't want to get ahead of myself," Rachel had that sort of proud smile on her face that could only be met without an eye roll by someone who loved her. "But if those guys on the other side are doing what we know needs to be done, we should be sending them back some Nationally ranked performers," she told Santana as they sat and reviewed the recording she had insisted on having made of their last auditorium rehearsal.

"You're really getting into this, aren't you?" Santana tossed her a smirk.

"What do you mean?" Rachel straightened up in her seat.

"Come on, you know what I mean. I've been watching you in there long enough…"

"Thanks," she threw her flirting look, and Santana nudged her.

"Long enough to know you've changed, too, not just them."

"Well I don't know about…" Rachel averted her eyes.

"Makes me proud," Santana went on, and now Rachel looked back at her, meeting the smile that matched her words. Her mouth opened as though to say 'oh,' but then closed again as she bowed her head, which made Santana chuckle. "Wait a second, are you blushing?"

"I don't blush, I don't…" But as Santana leaned in closer, she could not well hide the rose in her cheeks. "Oh, shut up," she begged, and to make sure she would, she pulled her to her lips, saying with a kiss what her words had failed to.

It wasn't wrong, after all. Rachel had been enjoying herself more in Glee Club in the last week than she might have done… ever, both at Carmel and McKinley. She didn't know what it was, maybe something about how they'd all been working to give Quinn, Kurt, and Mike their crash course, showing them just what they could achieve in that choir room. In doing so, Rachel had been taken back to the very heart of her old dreams, and now that she could see how it was doing them all good, now that she could see those old feelings back in action… it gave her hope, whether she'd announce it or not. She still had an image to uphold, and she was not that kind of girl, no matter how happy she was.

Quinn had been the easiest to mold back into shape. They realized that, out of the three versions of her they had encountered, she might have been the one who'd had it the hardest, with the baby situation, and her life at home and all of it, so they couldn't know what to expect exactly, once they got her into the Glee Club regimen. But she had responded to it all so well that it had left the rest of them speechless. She wanted to learn, wanted to do well. Santana would look at her with a sort of pointed glare like she suspected she was trying to get in Rachel's good graces, the better to get in her pants, the way she would with her own Rachel back in her own world. Santana would never mention this to her Rachel, because she knew how it sounded, but it wouldn't stop her keeping an eye on the blonde.

Kurt was doing well, too, most of the time. If he didn't actually get caught up in the fears he'd cultured in his own reality, then he would do just fine. But then there were the times where he did get caught up in all of it, and when this happened, all they could do was stand by him, be the friends he needed them to be, and not draw attention to the fact that they knew exactly what had him in knots. It wasn't that he didn't want to change. He could see how things were for his counterpart, here in this world, and he aspired to live the life that he did, while all the same wanting to stay himself. Whatever the time it would take, he, like Quinn, like Rachel, had not been so happy in a long time, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Then there was Mike. It was no surprise to anyone that he would be the one to struggle the most, but still that would not deter him. He had gotten his leg back, for however short a time it would be, and he wanted to use it, wanted to experience what it would be like, to be part of the Glee Club, to dance on stage… When he would go back, and his leg would be gone again, it would still be hard, yes, but he had to believe that those memories he would make here would sustain him; it was all he had. But then, try as he might, he couldn't keep himself from thinking about that moment, when all would go back to the way it was, and it agonized him. It was like reliving his accident in extra slow motion. He could see the impact coming, and it never arrived, it just kept coming. If he could only use that breadth in between to step aside, out of the way… But he couldn't.

They all had something worth hanging on to now, not just in that room, when they joined the others, but also when it was just the six of them. Against all odds, they had become friends, closer ones than they might have been independently. By all accounts they didn't have nearly any kind of control on their situation on this side, but they'd be damned if they just sat around and did nothing while they waited for the others to get their act together.

THE END

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******A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
************always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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